Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Brenda Chapman's "Butterfly Kills," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Butterfly Kills: A Stonechild and Rouleau Mystery by Brenda Chapman.

The entry begins:
I was intrigued but somewhat stymied by the idea of casting the lead characters in Butterfly Kills for a movie. I've had little time the past few years to watch movies, and besides that, I'm terrible at remembering names of friends let alone actors on a screen. To add to the challenge, I'd not written the novel with specific actors in mind. Luckily, I had a big ace up my sleeve.

One December afternoon, I enlisted the help of my good friend and movie aficionado Susan Rothery to help as my casting agent. Sue attends the Toronto International Film Festival every year and waits in line to take photos of up-and-coming and established stars. Movies are her passion and she has a memory for movie trivia for which I can only marvel. She'd also read my first Stonechild and Rouleau novel Cold Mourning and had a feel for my characters. She jumped at the task and over the course of the afternoon, narrowed down lists with several strong suggestions for each actor. My job was to check them out on Google and YouTube and weed down the list until I arrived at an award-winning cast of characters.

Selecting the director was easy. Sue and I immediately agreed on David Fincher, who created three spooky and suspenseful movies that I'd actually seen: Gone Girl, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (American version) and Zodiac. Movies, like books, are all about the setting and feel, so he was the natural choice to bring the dark suspense to life in Butterfly Kills.

We then set about choosing actors to play the three lead cops.

Jacques Rouleau is the staff sergeant and described as a man in his early fifties, bald, lean and green-eyed with the trace of a French accent. Vincent...[read on]
Visit Brenda Chapman's website.

The Page 69 Test: Butterfly Kills.

My Book, The Movie: Butterfly Kills.

--Marshal Zeringue